JURNAL HUBUNGAN INTERNASIONAL VOL. 7, NO. 2, Oktober 2018-Maret 2019 https://doi.org/10.18196/hi.72132 Donald Trump‘s 3rotectionist Trade Policy from the Perspective of Economic Nationalism Azza Bimantara Institute of International Studies, Department of International Relations Universitas Gadjah Mada Bulaksumur, Yogyakarta 55281 [email protected] Submitted: 19 October 2018; accepted: 30 January 2019 Abstrak Artikel ini menganalisis kebijakan perdagangan proteksionis Amerika Serikat (AS) di bawah kepemimpinan Donald Trump. Dengan menerapkan sejumlah tarif dan kuota terhadap impor pertanian dan manufaktur, Trump memantik perang dengan sejumlah rekan dagang penting dunia. Problematisasi pertama isu ini ialah kebijakan perdagangan Trump gagal menekan mitra-mitra dagangnya untuk patuh, meski ekspor mereka lebih bergantung pada pasar AS dibandingkan sebaliknya. Yang kedua ialah sebagian besar lawan perang dagang Trump merupakan negara demokratis; hal ini merupakan anomali terhadap asumsi yang telah mapan tentang teori perdamaian demokratis bahwa struktur dan norma yang dipegang negara-negara demokratis mencegah mereka terlibat dalam konfrontasi politik-keamanan dan ekonomi. Melalui nasionalisme ekonomi dalam perspektif historis serta kerangka analisis nasionalisme dialeNtika ‘Hegelian’ nasionalisme, artikel ini Eerargumen bahwa Nebijakan perdagangan proteNsionis Donald Trump dapat dianggap sebagai upaya untuk tidak hanya melindungi kepentingan ekonomi nasional tetapi juga mengamankan kekuasaan politiknya di hadapan para konstituen beserta tuntutannya di level nasional. Manifestasi tersebut dapat dilacak ke belakang hingga ke konstruksi nasionalisme Amerika yang menunjukkan kesejarahan dari pragmatisme AS terhadap ekonomi politik global. Kata kunci: Donald Trump, nasionalisme ekonomi, proteksionisme, kebijakan perdagangan, negara dan pasar. Abstract This article aims to analyze the United States’ protectionist trade policies under Donald Trump’s administration. By imposing a set of tariffs and quotas for such imported agriculture and manufactured products, he triggered a series of trade war to several world Ney trading partners. The first proElematization of this issue is that Trump’s trade policies failed to push compliances from its trade partner despite their higher relative export dependency on American market rather than on the contrary. The second is most of Trump’s ‘trade Eelligerents’ are democratic countries; therefore, it Eecomes an anomaly to the prominent assumption of democratic peace theory which stated that structures and norms held by democratic countries prevent them from engaging both in harsh political-security and economic confrontation. Through the historical perspective of economic nationalism combined with an analytical frameworN of ‘Hegelian’ dialectics of nationalism, this article argues that Donald Trump’s protectionist trade policy can be considered as an attempt to not only protect national economic interest but also to secure his political power before his constituents and their national postulation. Such manifestation can be traced back to the construction of American nationalism that shows US historical pragmatic standpoint toward the global political economy. Keywords: Donald Trump, economic nationalism, protectionism, trade policy, state and market. INTRODUCTION During his speech in February 2017, the United States (US) President, Donald Trump, argued that many countries have benefited from relatively-low import tariff imposed by US authority so they could sell their commodities as much as they can while they imposed high taxes for US exports (Schwartz, 2017). Available data supported him by showing that the US trade deficit to the world increased from USD 736.58 billion in 2016 to USD 795.69 billion in 2017 (US Census Bureau, 2018). In this context, Corrected Proof. Please cite this article as: Bimantara, A. (2018). Donald Trump’s Protectionist Trade Policy from the Perspective of Economic 1ationalism. Jurnal Hubungan Internasional, 7(2). https://doi.org/10.18196/hi.72132 China in 2016 and 2017 became the most contributor with its trade gap reaching from USD 347 billion (43.6% of US total world trade deficit) to USD 375.2 billion (47.15%) (US Census Bureau, 2018). The European Union (EU), Mexico, Japan, Vietnam, Malaysia, India, South Korea, Thailand, Canada, and Taiwan also become the next top contributors by sharing around 57-58% of US total of world trade deficit. President Trump‘s unease concern about such unfair international trade structure faced by the US was translated into protectionist policies. He ordered US International Trade Commission (USITC), US Department of Commerce (DoC), and US Trade Representative (USTR) to study about the potential harm done by trade partners toward US market and intellectual properties. US government uses Section 201 and 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 and Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962. 8ntil this paper is written, Trump‘s safeguard trade policies targeted China, Canada, Mexico, EU, and South Korea, as the US 'trade belligerents.' Cited from Bown and Kolb (2018), US imposed tariffs and quotas on imported steel (10%), aluminum (25%), washing machine, solar panel, and more than 1,300 other products. This trade policy then provokes those targeted countries to retaliate. South Korea sued the US through the World Trade Organization (WTO) dispute settlement mechanism (DS0) for the washing machine and the solar panel‘s feud (:T2, 2018). 0exico imposed tariffs on US potato, apple, cheese, pork, and dairy products worth approximately USD 3 billion (Swanson & Tankersley, 2018). Canada also imposed tariffs for USD 12.8 billion US steel, aluminum, tomato sauce, maple syrup, and orange juice exports (Canadian Department of Finance, 2018). EU taxes US Harley Davidson, bourbon, jeans, and cranberries 25% of their worth (Bown, 2018). China, the US biggest trade partner, imposed more complex measures. Beside US fruits and nuts, pork, and scrap steel and aluminum worth USD 2.4 billion (Lu & Schott, 2018), Chinese authority released 106-commodities list for 25% tariffs worth USD 45 billion (Ministry of Commerce of P. R. China, 2018). A series of global trade war then triggered. There are two problematizations of this issue. First, President Trump‘s trade policy rationalization is based on the logic that US government will be able to push their trade interest toward countries whose exports are more dependent on US market than the opposite way. It can be shown through export dependency ratio (EDR) which indicates a percentage of a country‘s total export to certain partner country from exporting-country‘s total gross national product/GNP (Zeng, 2004). Ipso facto, the average of US‘s EDR toward trade belligerents during 2016-2017 only ranged from 0.88-5.67% despite the increasing trend (see Table 1). 0eanwhile, the trade Eelligerents‘ EDRs toward the US get a higher range (2.52-28.26%) despite the decreasing trend on the same period (US Census Bureau, 2018; CEIC, 2018; see Table 2). However, the situation did not occur as expected. President Trump‘s tariff policy is immediately retaliated by similar or even more complex measures. Second, four out of the five countries involved in Trump‘s trade war are democratic countries. The situation somehow ”falsified‘ democratic peace theory which assumes that structure and norms held by democratic countries prevent them from engaging in a large scale of conflicting relations in both political security (Doyle, 1983) and economy (Zeng, 2004). Table 1. US EDR on trade belligerents 2016-2017 Table 2. EDR of trade belligerents on US 2016-2017 This paper aims to highlight President Trump‘s recent protectionist trade policy with the following research question: why does Donald Trump implement the protectionist policy to US foreign trade? The hypothetical answer for this Tuestion is that Donald Trump‘s protectionist trade policy (tariffs and quotas) can be considered as an attempt to not only protect national economic interest but also to secure his political power before his constituents and their national postulation. To answer this question, the explanation structured in several parts. After explaining the economic nationalism that will be utilized as a theoretical framework, the article will divide the summarized construction of American nationalism in both political and economic sense. It will be useful as a historical modality for the contemporary discourse of American nationalism brought by Trump during his campaign and presidency. The comparative result will be correlated to the trade policy-making conducted by President Trump. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK There are two reasons why this paper chooses economic nationalism as a theoretical framework. First, historical references show that protectionist trade policy has been conducted by most of the countries like the US during the late 18th century, British, Germany, and Japan during the 19th century; their economies depended on state‘s intervention and protectionist measures. Only when their economies become mature, they open their market and propagate free and fair trade to expand their production and market (Chang, 2002). Even when the global economy collapsed during the 1930s Great Depression, their hypocrisies led them to pursue protectionist policy. Empirically speaking, it will be useful to study the phenomenon of so-called ”Trumponomics‘ from the perspective of economic nationalism. Second, Steve Bannon who held the administrative position as Senior Counsel to the